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and then there were two

Two is the number of the moment! you are getting two days in one post, we now have two drains and today we had two sets of twins digging with us!

Yesterday brought the second drain, after the first in the oblong room we now have one in the apsidal room as well.

The dark area is the backfilled Richmond trench

The excavated drain

Unlike the first drain this one had been excavated to the bottom by Richmond and was full of broken plant pots and fine early 20th century china.

Martin gets going with the mattock

Martin got out the mattock to dig a test hole to see how deep the mixed layer was in the southern half of the excavation. By doing this we can gauge how to dig it, once we know the depth of the layers if it’s a deep layer we can use a mattock or if it’s not very deep we can use the trowel.

Oliver, Harry, Thomas and Tom all digging away

Today we were joined by two sets of twins, Thomas and Oliver, and Tom and Harry, all budding young archaeologists. We set them to work next to Martins trench and they soon found lots of roman finds. They worked very hard and found roof tiles, bone and lots of tesserae (the small cubes of mosaic). I think the happy smiles in the following pictures tells us they had a very enjoyable and interesting time.

Fay helping Thomas and Tom

Allan helping Thomas and Tom to excavate a large fragment of tile

Tom with his stone roof tile, at the top is the nail hole

Thomas with the sheep bone he found, the remains of a roman snack

Oliver and Harry with the tray of tesserae they found

This afternoon produced a large fragment of red-painted plaster, the largest piece yet, large pieces of pottery,a hob nail from a shoe and a small piece of roman glass. No rest on Bank Holiday Monday for us, but no one minds especially as we have good roman layers to dig 🙂